BEB detectives conducted searches at the large local chain of “Marketopt” stores: what is the reason?
26 April 00:21
Detectives from the Economic Security Bureau (ESB) conducted large-scale searches at the largest local grocery store chain in the Poltava region, which had enlisted more than 3,500 sole proprietors to evade taxes. This was reported by the Economic Security Bureau, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
The BEB did not specify which chain was involved. According to Poltava media, the chain in question is “Marketopt.”
Detectives from the EBS Main Detective Division, together with the EBS regional office in Poltava Oblast, conducted large-scale searches at a grocery store chain in Poltava Oblast, which has over 400 retail locations and operates in seven regions of Ukraine.
According to the investigation, the company used a “business fragmentation” scheme to evade taxes. Over 3,500 individual entrepreneurs were involved in the operation.
“Some of them were registered as employees of the chain, while others were registered as third parties, including students and retirees. In fact, these people worked as hired employees but were registered as entrepreneurs,” the State Bureau of Investigations said.
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Some participants in the scheme registered sole proprietorships, kept “off-the-books” accounting records, paid salaries in cash envelopes, and ensured that income did not exceed the statutory limits for sole proprietorships in the relevant category.
“This mechanism allowed them to avoid paying taxes required of legal entities. According to preliminary estimates, the budget lost millions of hryvnias,” the BEB stated.
During the searches, detectives seized documents, bank cards, computer equipment, rough notes, unaccounted-for cash, and data storage devices that may confirm illegal activity. The pre-trial investigation is ongoing.
According to the online publication “Poltavshchyna,” “Marketopt’s activities have long been under close scrutiny by tax authorities.”
Back in December 2025, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax, and Customs Policy officially recognized the network’s operating scheme as an example of large-scale tax evasion.
At the time, Committee Chairman Danylo Getmantsev noted that due to the legal fragmentation of the business, the state budget loses approximately 4.3 billion hryvnias annually.
As of the end of 2025, the network operated through 1,500 sole proprietorships.
“Statistics at the time showed that with revenue exceeding 5.7 billion hryvnias, the network paid only 219 million hryvnias in taxes—23 times less than law-abiding competitors with similar turnover,” the publication states.
Recent results of BEB searches show that since the end of last year, the scale of “fragmentation” has significantly increased, notes “Poltavshchyna.”
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